Horses are dreadful hypochondriacs. They also hate work. We may kid ourselves that horses enjoy being ridden. But horses, if truth be told, just want to be left alone to eat. They are willing to do almost anything to achieve this end.
Tara, the chestnut mare, has over the years tried every ruse. She once bucked me sky-high in the woods, then galloped home on her own: down the main road in Cobham she went, reins and stirrups dangling, stopping traffic all the way. She negotiated several major junctions before swerving into the yard and putting herself to bed in her stable where, after trudging back on foot, I found her happily munching.
Gracie, the skewbald pony, leads me a merry dance every time I try to get her in from the field, plunging her head to the ground to snatch at passing tufts of grass — ‘just a bit more, no wait, a bit more, no really, that’s it, no, one last mouthful then I’m coming, hang on, just this patch, no, I’m really coming this time, oo wait, just this bit, and this bit…’
A cowboy in Montana once tried to explain it to me: ‘You know, a horse is really just a stomach on legs.’
If we had half a ton of body to keep filled in order to stay alive we would probably spend as many hours of the day as we could stuffing food into our mouths.
As well as bucking me off, Tara is a dab hand at the indiscriminate self-inflicted injury requiring box rest.
A few years ago, she managed to rip her nostril open during the night. They don’t tell you when you start the business of horse-owning that horses defy all attempts to keep them from self-harming.
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